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Quoting:The pressure is on in that Microsoft has been busy building out an entire stack of applications and services able to fully leverage their superior interop-integration with the MS desktop monopoly. The MS Stack crosses the grand convergence space of desktop, server, device and web systems. Every application is capable of speaking fluent MS-OOXML with highly proprietary and platform specific "Smart Tags" (replaces VBa scripts, macros, OLE, security as well as add a data binding/extraction model, metadata, forms, and workflow capability to document level objects).

I read the article before and it is scary.
But the way I look at it, it is not scary to FOSS only, but to MS, its partners and most important to their customers.

Sophistication creates complication and MS framework is getting so heavy it is going to buckle under its own weight and product inter-dependencies. It is going to be very cumbersome to set up and more trouble to maintain reliability let alone all the little things that will need constant attention.

Quoting:when people come to us and say, “Hey, this commercial piece of software violates our patent, our intellectual property, we’ll either get a court judgment or we’ll pay a big check. And we are going to — I think it is important that the Open Source products also have an obligation to participate in the same way in the intellectual property regime.

OK Mr. Ballmer, why don't you come to us, like other companies are coming to you, to let us know what patents, or IP if you prefer, you think FOSS infringes on? You do that and we will do what you are suggesting for us to do. Very simple isn't? Unless you have no basis for what you are spewing.

It is a fair question Mr. Ballmer. We have taken the initiative to ask it and we expect an answer from you to comply with your preferred process. What are you waiting for? We are anxiously waiting for your response.

Quoting:Repeating his call for software patents, Ballmer argued for a limited reform of the US patent system.

"The thing I worry about is that people will want to throw the baby out with the bath water and say: 'Let's just get rid of this.' That would be a terrible thing for innovation in companies large and small," he said.

"Reform makes sense, but we should make sure that it facilitates innovation in our industry as well as others."

This is the real intent of Balmer's speach, Red Hat and infringing patents ia just a smoke screen. Balmers real intent is to create the impression that patents are good and drive innovation.

Abe.

Quoting:
Sophistication creates complication and MS framework is getting so heavy it is going to buckle under its own weight and product inter-dependencies. It is going to be very cumbersome to set up and more trouble to maintain reliability let alone all the little things that will need constant attention

I doubt that Microsoft is worried about any of that. The intent is to build on the onlly innovation Microsoft ever did, the total vertical stack from Operating system to applications that sit on top of it. The whole point of Microsoft Windows was, and is, to have a complete stack that is so dependent on a single technology that is embedded into the OS that customers have to buy Microsoft applications to function. COM/OLE was one such now it's OOXML, nothing has changed at Microsoft except the linking technology.

Quoting:Balmers real intent is to create the impression that patents are good and drive innovation.

My impression was along the lines of "do onto others what has been done to you". It was like "we got screwed by patents so we're gonna screw everyone else" - that's the "obligation to participate in the same way in the intellectual property regime".
At least that's the impression... [we, Poles, have a natural tendency to read between the lines - or even between the lies - maybe even if the message wasn't written that way]

Quoting:COM/OLE was one such now it's OOXML, nothing has changed at Microsoft except the linking technology.

Tracyanne, you left out .Net framwork. :)

Quoting:As long as their protection-racket scams and bullying continue to work that's good enough.

The big question is, how long it is going to continue?

MS is taking advantage of the momentum they have to build on it with more lock-in using all this new technology, but FOSS is getting better and better and companies and countries are realizing what is happening. They can't make the switch easily but they surely are planning for it to be deployed in their operations.

They might not know it or they don't care about it, but I believe that complication they are creating is going to hurt them.

Depends on what you mean by .NET framework. Mostly .NET framework was a marketing term that attempted to shoehorn a number microsoft technologies under the same banner - unsuccessfully (even Microsoft worked that out.

.Net framework as in the Common Language infrastructure, is merely a tool, that can be used for any purpose, that leverages XML and makes possible multiple language development On Any Platform that implements it, as Mono demonstrates. The fact that Microsoft have taken great pains to lock their implementation of what is essentially an open technology into the Windows OS is neither here nor there with respect to the technology itself.

What I meant by .Net framework is all the tools that include CLR, VS, Atlas (recently released MS implementation of AJAX) etc. All of these are the foundations for Share Point and such. OOXML is just one part of the whole thing but plays as the fundamental link among all of them.

IBM sees all of this and are trying to counter with FileNet, which is equivalent to Share point but using and requiring Websphere along with FOSS applications like apache and tools like PHP and AJAX.

MS has been successful in selling Share Point to some corporations but has been more costly and troublesome than it is worth. I know because my company did that and lots of money and time was wasted. Now we started using FileNet which is getting more implementations for technical reason. Having IBM in the door was unthinkable at my company especially when they supported Apache only. things are changing and IBM is in.

Quoting:MS has been successful in selling Share Point to some corporations but has been more costly and troublesome than it is worth.

The big danger isn't in MS trying to get sharepoint into coprorations like that. The trap lies with small businesses that deploy an exchange server which is really a sharepoint server in disguise. Then someday the lone sysadmin of that company finds feature X and decides to turn it on to see what it is, and before you know it, the company is locked into sharepoint.

Quoting:What I meant by .Net framework is all the tools that include CLR, VS, Atlas (recently released MS implementation of AJAX) etc. All of these are the foundations for Share Point and such. OOXML is just one part of the whole thing but plays as the fundamental link among all of them.

You forget, the .NET you describe is merely a tool, it makes all the things you pointed to possible, but it makes other things possible too, as the Mono team have demonstrated. You are concentrating on the wrong things. The fact that Microsoft use the .net framework to integrate OOXML and sharepoint portal etc into a single vertical application stack is irrelevent to the technology itself. That's just how Microsoft use it, they could be using a completely different technology to acheive the same purpose, a vertical applications stack.

The Open source would, and other companies IBM, Sun etc could, and probably should develop a competing and as pervasive stack, but based on open standards. Microsoft's greatest strength, the vertical applications stack that relies on a single technology embedded in the OS is also it's greatest weakness, an that is what Microsoft doesn't want people to understand. Which is why you get Ballmer taking people off at a tangent with IP threats and all sort of wild goose chases.

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